As computers become increasingly powerful and commonplace, they are being used for an increasingly broad variety of tasks. For example, in addition to traditional activities such as running word processing and database applications, computers are increasingly becoming an integral part of users' daily lives. Programs to schedule activities, generate reminders, and provide rapid communication capabilities are becoming increasingly popular. Moreover, computers are increasingly present during virtually all of a person's daily activities. For example, hand-held computer organizers (e.g., PDAS) are increasingly common, and communication devices such as portable phones are increasingly incorporating computer capabilities. More recently, the field of wearable computers (e.g., with eyeglass displays) has begun to expand, creating a further presence of computers in people's daily lives.
Computers often progress through a particular series of steps when allowing a user to accomplish a particular task. For example, if a user desires to enter a new name and address to an electronic address book, the computer progresses through a series of steps prompting the user to enter the desired information (e.g., name, street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, etc.). On computers with large displays (e.g., typical desktop computers), sufficient area exists on the display to provide an informative and useable user interface (UI) that allows the user to enter the necessary data for the series of steps. However, problems exist when attempting to guide the user through the particular series of steps on smaller displays. Without the large display area, there is frequently insufficient room to provide the prompts in the same informative and useable manner.
Additionally, the nature of many new computing devices with small displays (e.g., PDAs and wearable computers) is that the computing devices are transported with the user. However, traditional computer programs are not typically designed to efficiently present information to users in a wide variety of environments. For example, most computer programs are designed with a prototypical user being seated at a stationary computer with a large display device, and with the user devoting fill attention to the display. In that environment, the computer program can be designed with the assumption that the user's attention is predominately on the display device. However, many new computing devices with small displays can be used when the user's attention is more likely to be diverted to some other task (e.g., driving, using machinery, walking, etc.). Many traditional computer programs, designed with large display devices in mind, frequently do not allow the user to quickly and easily reorient him- or her-self to the task being carried out by the computer. For example, if the user is performing a task by following a series of steps on a wearable computer, looks away from the display to focus his or her attention on crossing a busy intersection, and then returns to the task, it would be desirable for the user to be able to quickly and easily reorient him- or her-self to the task (in other words, readily know what steps he or she has accomplished so far and what the next step to be performed is).
Accordingly, there is a need for new techniques to display the current status of tasks to a user.